9 jailed in racially sensitive UK sex ring case

Undated handout composite image issued Tuesday May 8, 2012, by Greater Manchester Police showing eight of the nine men who have been convicted for luring girls as young as 13-years old into sexual encounters using alcohol and drugs, top row left to right, Abdul Rauf, Hamid Safi, Mohammed Sajid and Abdul Aziz, and with Bottom row left to right, Abdul Qayyum, Adil Khan, Mohammed Amin and Kabeer Hassan. The nine men aged between 22 and 59 are convicted of charges including rape, assault, sex trafficking and conspiracy and will be sentenced Wednesday May 9, 2012 at court in Liverpool, England. The ninth man in the group, a 59-year-old man cannot be named for legal reasons. (AP Photo / Greater Manchester Police)

LONDON (AP) — Nine men in northwest England were sentenced to jail Wednesday for luring girls as young as 13 into sex using alcohol and drugs — a case that has stirred racial tensions and sparked claims that U.K. authorities are failing to protect children in state care.

Judge Gerald Clifton said the men, all of Pakistani or Afghan origin ranging from age 22 to 59, had treated their victims as "worthless," and sentenced them for crimes including trafficking and rape.

The 59-year-old ringleader of the group received 19 years in jail, while others received between four and 12 years.

Because all the defendants were South Asian and all the victims were white, the case has been seized upon by far-right groups, who protested outside the trial in Liverpool.

More measured voices have pointed out that most sex crimes in Britain are committed by white men. But some say there is a specific problem in northern English communities, where a toxic combination of alienated men and vulnerable, unsupervised girls has allowed exploitation to flourish.

"All of you treated (the victims) as though they were worthless and beyond any respect," the judge told the nine men. "One of the factors leading to that was the fact that they were not part of your community or religion."

Martin Narey, former chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's, said men of Pakistani descent were "overwhelmingly represented in prosecutions" for sexual exploitation offenses in some northern English towns such as Rochdale, 170 miles (275 kilometers) from London.

"That is not to condemn a whole community. Most Asians would absolutely abhor what we have seen in the last few days in the Rochdale trial, and I don't think this is about white girls," he told the BBC. "It's sadly because vulnerable girls on the street at night are generally white rather than more strictly parented Asian girls, but there is a real problem here."

Twenty-six men were arrested in the investigation, which identified 47 potential victims. Eleven men were charged and nine convicted of charges including rape, assault, sex trafficking and conspiracy.

The men abused the girls in taxis, kebab shops and apartments. The five victims who shared their stories with jurors described being raped, assaulted and traded for sex. Sometimes they were passed from man to man and sometimes they were too drunk to stop the abuse.

The men used various defenses, including claiming the girls were prostitutes. Several said they did not know the age of consent in Britain, which is 16.

British police and the Crown Prosecution Service have apologized for delays in investigating the case. One of the victims first spoke out in 2008, but prosecutors failed to press charges amid concerns that a jury might have questioned the girl's credibility.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating why that decision was made.

The case has also drawn calls for greater protection to be given to vulnerable children. Several of the victims were estranged from their families or in state care.

Education regulator Ofsted, which inspects children's homes, said in the past five years there have been 631 "actual or suspected" cases of children in homes being sold for sex, though the number of individuals involved is smaller. England has almost 5,000 children in state care.

Ofsted said it was the duty of police and local authorities to step in when such abuse was reported.

Detective Inspector Michael Sanderson, of the police sexual offenses unit, said the sentences handed out Wednesday sent "a strong message that (police) will hunt down and prosecute anyone believed to be involved in the sexual exploitation of children."

The trial at Liverpool Crown Court was a tense affair marred by allegations of intimidation.

Far-right groups such as the English Defense League and the British National Party led protests shortly after the trial began Feb. 6, and two nonwhite defense lawyers quit the case, saying they had been threatened.

A lawyer for one of the defendants said he would challenge the guilty verdict after British National Party leader Nick Griffin tweeted news about the jury's deliberations before they had returned their verdicts — leading some to suspect a courtroom leak.

But Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of moderate Muslim think-tank the Ramadhan Foundation, said the trial had exposed a real problem that should not be ignored out of fear it would galvanize racists.

"Race is a contributing factor and police have to confront it," he said. "We obviously have a problem with some Pakistani men, criminals, who engage in this behavior believing that white girls are worthless and they can use and abuse them in this way."

Associated PressCopyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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